Perils of the United Sto. 



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ADDRESvS Oi^' 

REV. CHARLES WADSWORTH, Jr., D.D. 

BEFORE THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

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Perils of the United States 



ADDRESS OF 

REV. CHARLES WADSWORTH, Jr., D.D. 

BEFORE THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
APRIL 13. 1918 




MCMXVm 



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OCT 31 llltf 



Perils of the United States 

Mark Twain tells of an experience in a western town, 
where he was to lecture. Arriving in the afternoon and 
having some time on his hands, he decided to explore the 
community and see if its inhabitants were thrilling with 
anticipation of the privilege which they were about to 
enjoy. Eather to his chagrin, he could discover no signs 
indicating any knowledge of his coming. Accordingly he 
went into the village store, and asked the proprietor, *'Is 
there going to be a lecture in this towm this evening? " 
The proprietor was filling a can with kerosene, and rising 
from a stooping posture replied, '^Wliy yes, stranger, I 
sort of suspicion there is going to be a lecture, because 
I have been selling eggs all day." Those having charge 
of this Anniversary have wisely camouflaged all features 
of a lecture behind the pleasing disguise of a Lunch ; and 
you may feel some resentment toward me w^hen you find 
an address ambushed in a bill of fare. The only way I 
can disarm your natural antagonism is to select a topic 
which will interest all; and I feel sure that my subject at 
least will appeal to all patriotic hearts. I am to say a few 
words upon ^'The Perils of the United States." 

Never before did this Republic face so many or so great 
perils as those which now threaten it : perils at home, and 
perils abroad; perils of open hostility, and perils of 
concealed treachery. 



PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

Of the perils abroad , of course, the outstanding danger 
is Germany. No more appalling peril ever menaced man- 
kind than Prussian Militarism. Your President tells me, 
that in your spring meeting you commemorate the grant- 
ing of the Charter of Pennsylvania to William Penn. 
Wlien Penn arrived in the new world, he found himself 
confronted by and compelled to deal with savages; and 
we to-day, standing not far from the spot on which he 
stood two hundred and thirty-six years ago, find ourselves 
confronted by and compelled to deal with savages. 
How different are the savages that confront us from the 
savages that confronted him! Penn's savages were primi- 
tive and simple; our savages are subtle, educated, and 
self-conscious. Penn's savages knew nothing of Nature's 
secrets, and controlled none of her forces. The savages 
confronting us have explored the recesses of creation, 
discovered the laws of Nature, threaded the labyrinth of 
matter, and mastered the forces of the universe. Penn's 
savages stood upon the lowest plain of ignorance; our 
sav^ages stand upon the very pinnacles of science, pano- 
plied like gods with immeasurable power. Penn's savages 
were cave-men; our savages are super-men. But in all 
the qualities and excellences of manhood, how infinitely 
below those poor aborigines of the forest are these so- 
called super-men of the twentieth century! Penn's 
savages were amenable to reason, responsive to kindness ; 
and although half-naked red men, were essentially human. 
The savages confronting us are dehumanized monsters, 
hideous embodiments of ' ' schrecklichkeit. ' ' With all their 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

amazing abilities, and with all their towering attainments, 
they have dug themselves into a pit immeasurably more 
degraded than that in which primeval savages grovelled. 
All the climbing of the ages has ended for them in an 
abyss of demonism and depi^vity. The great process 
of evolution has in them taken an appalling turn, as it 
did in Nebuchadnezzar the king; and has brought forth 
a beastly insanity which is the menace of the world. 

Imagination easily depicts the consequences which 
would follow if Germany were to win this war. There 
would be a wassail of frightfulness such as might be 
expected from those who ravaged Belgium and sunk the 
Lusitania. The horrors of the ancient Assyrian tyranny 
would be surpassed. All moral obligations of justice 
and honor; all such considerations as decency, mercy, 
humanity, would be scornfully repudiated as '* scraps of 
paper" not binding upon super-men. Christian civi- 
lization would be torpedoed by the submarine of a pagan 
militarism. Nations would be exploited under the most 
thorough and adroit despotism ever known, a despotism 
so knit together by telephones, telegraphs and w^ireless 
nerves, and made so infernally effective by the equipments 
of science, that its little finger would be thicker than the 
loins of even the Roman Inquisition. Distance would 
offer no difficulties to its administration; oceans w^ould 
interpose no barriers to its career. On the other side of 
the world, it would levy its tributes as easily, and enforce 
its will as absolutely, as upon a city lying at its very 
gates. America would be only a larger, richer Belgium to 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

be negotiated, until the once happy citizens of a republi- 
can regime would groan under the oppression of the 
Pan-German yoke. 

This horrible peril is ominous and imminent, threaten- 
ing civilization and humanity to-day, because of the delay 
of the United States, and the way in which it was held 
back from doing its duty, when humanity and civilization 
were attacked. It was moved neither to serve God, nor 
even to prepare itself. Three invaluable and pivotal 
years were lost beyond recall for this Republic. 

I am reminded of a story of an angler, who, having 
caught nothing on his trip, as he returned stopped at a 
store and bought a fish to take home, so that the festivities 
which had engrossed his time might be hidden. He was 
a clever manipulator of facts, an artistic manufacturer of 
history; so he graphically described to his wife how he 
had skilfully hooked this particular fish; and played it 
with remarkable judgment. *'If I had tried to pull it 
out of the water too soon," he told her, ''I would have 
broken my line. I played it until it was tired out. By 
my remarkable intuition, I knew precisely when the psy- 
chological moment had arrived; and when I saw that 
the right time had come, I promptly put my net under it, 
and landed it without hurting my tackle. A great deal 
depends upon the skill of the angler." The wife smelled 
the fish, which was very stale; and looking at her gifted 
husband, asked, ''Did you say you caught this fish 
to-day?" 

* ' Yes, ' ' he replied. 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

*'Then," she scornfully answered, with her nose held 
high in the air, and an expression of utter disgust upon 
her face, "all I can say is, that it was very lucky you did 
not postpone catching it until to-morrow." 

These three years have not been neglected by the Ger- 
mans. Our delay was their salvation. It gave them 
time to develop their submarines ; and with their propa- 
ganda to debauch Italy and demoralize Russia ; until now, 
with their millions set free from the eastern front they 
have been able to concentrate their military forces upon 
the western lines, where poor America has too few 
soldiers. These soldiers of the United States are magnifi- 
cent men, and will give a splendid account of themselves ; 
but they are only a handful in such a colossal operation. 
A transcendent issue hangs at this moment in the balance ; 
and all that through these years has stood between civi- 
lization and the most terrible disaster, all that stands 
to-day between the United States and dire tragedy, are the 
British fleet, and the English and French soldiers. 

Speaking in Philadelphia last week the very Reverend 
George Adam Smith described, how, in the fateful days 
of August, 1914, the people of Great Britain waited with 
bated breath and the most intense anxiety to learn the 
decision of their Government ; and how a wave of thank- 
fulness and relief swept over their communities, when it 
was announced, that their Government had not paltered 
with a Call of God, had not played politics with a moral 
crisis, had not sought to avoid a dangerous duty; but, 
standing by its treaty obligations, had leaped to the help 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

of Belgium, and declared war upon the assassin of 
Humanity. 

The citizens of the United States have every reason 
to be humbly thankful that the Leaders of France and 
England in 1914 were statesmen of enlightened intellect 
and moral nature. If they had been so mentally deficient 
as not to be able to read the signs of the times until three 
years too late: if they had been so morally blind that it 
took them thirty-six supine months to distinguish right 
from wrong, and good from evil; if they had been so 
spiritually callous as to have remained unmoved by the 
Call of God and the Cry of Humanity, and to have 
stretched forth no hand against the Beast that was ravag- 
ing civilization, this Republic would long since have fallen 
before the unopposed rush of the mighty machine of 
Prussian Militarism. 

If civilization is saved, it will be due to the fact that 
during those years England and France, under leaders 
who were not deaf to Humanity's appeal, sprang without 
delay to the "help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord 
against the mighty." If the United States is saved, it 
will be due to the fact, that during those years, England 
and France did not shirk their duty; but, rushing into 
the frightful hell, nobly withstood the savages of the 
twentieth century. All honor to them, and to their 
Leaders ! 

The Prophet Ezekiel, in one of his impassioned out- 
bursts of inspired eloquence, proclaims the responsibility 
of the leader in a great crisis : 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

"The Word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son 
of Man, speak unto the children of thy people, and say 
unto them — AVhen I bring the sword upon a land, if the 
people of that land choose a man of their coasts and set 
him for a watchman; if when the sword come upon the 
land, the watchman blow not the trumpet, and the people 
be not warned; if the sword come and take any person 
from among them, his blood will I require of the watch- 
man 's hand. ' ' 

Four years after God called for help in Belgium, and 
three years after American women and infants wailed for 
help in the Lusitania, the United States is beginning to 
get ready to oppose the peril, which statesmen saw clearly 
in 1914 ; and that is the reason this German menace is so 
portentous to-day. 

The perils menacing this Republic are not limited to 
the foreign field. There are perils also within our otvn 
borders. 

Here too the Germans loom as one of the most serious. 
Germany has accomplished as much by means of her 
propaganda and spies as she has by means of her armies. 
Germans have reduced this matter to a system and a 
science. They study the psychology of the peoples whom 
they seek to deceive, searching out the yellow streaks, the 
weak spots, mental and moral. With an art infernal in its 
cleverness they adapt their message to the personal equa- 
tion of those whom they desire to influence, blowing now 
hot, now cold; spreading one sort of falsehoods in the 
Balkans, an entirely different sort in Russia, another in 

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PERILS OF THE UxMTED STATES 

Italy, and another in America. They employ a thousand 
different agents. They speak through a thousand differ- 
ent voices. One of their more recent voices was the so- 
called legislature of the contemptible Bolsheviki, which 
guided by German agents, replying to some message from 
Washington, sent greetings to the people of the United 
States, and denounced this war as a capitalists' trick. 
This message yellow newspapers reported, and so became 
German instruments to disseminate her propaganda in 
American communities. She has innumerable spies in this 
country from wealthy social lights to tramps, from con- 
ductors of orchestras to college professors, from poli- 
ticians to editors, from employers to laborers. America 
has been too patient to these traitors. For three years 
free rein was given to the official Representatives of Ger- 
many, and they were allowed with impunity to carry on 
through this Republic the plottings of Berlin. The har- 
vests of those sowings have sprung up, and now can be 
rooted out only by vigorous action. A Boche in the 
trenches as an acknowledged enemy is abominable enough, 
a ruthless Hun ; but a Boche in this country, as a concealed 
enemy, is intolerable vermin. Extermination is demanded. 
A gentleman in a restaurant was given an egg which 
was impossible. He called the waiter, saying angrily, 
''Waiter, this egg is bad." 

"Yes, sir," said the waiter; "what shall I do with it?" 
"I think," replied the diner disgustedly, "you had 
better wring its neck." 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

The sooner the necks of these bad eggs, these traitors 
and spies, are wrung, the sooner America will be safe. 

Spies are by no means our only internal danger. 
Some of the most ominous of our internal perils are due 
to foolish Americans; and one of the most sinister of 
these to-day is the ifisidious undermining of the Con- 
stitution of the United States. 

The Constitution has preserved this Nation in exist- 
ence, and has made it great. It was not the child of 
frantic sentimentalists. It was not the child of extrava- 
gant emotionalists like Rousseau. Our Constitution is an 
Anglo-Saxon product, and is characterized by Anglo- 
Saxon excellencies. It has the sanity and equilibrium 
of the remarkable statesmen who contrived it and so ad- 
mirably equipped it with safety valve and balance wheel, 
that Daniel Webster, the profoundest statesman of his 
generation, pronounced it ''A miraculous Constitution." 
Through one hundred and thirty years, it has demon- 
strated its inestimable value and its inexhaustible virtue. 
The United States has survived terrible crises, and con- 
tinued to increase in spite of searching visitations, be- 
cause of this elastic and yet stable and stabilizing Con- 
stitution. It is a masterpiece of the genius of statecraft. 

To-day this splendid Constitution is being insidiously 
undermined, not only by the hair-brained, or by vicious 
anarchists. Of course it is to be expected that light- 
weight nit-wits should assail it. We would almost be 
tempted to doubt its worth, if such acrid minds approved 
it. But to-day it is being insidiously undermined by some 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

who have sworn to maintain it. Its adjustments for main- 
taining the balance of power in the Government, by dis- 
tributing that power among three coordinate, equal, and 
independent Departments, have been ignored. The Legis- 
lative Department has been so superciliously subordi- 
nated, and such supreme authority has been assumed by 
the Executive, that Congress has sunk, until its condition 
sometimes suggests the Reichstag rather than the British 
Parliament. 

To say that no former Executive in the history of 
the United States ever possessed the power now controlled 
by the President, would be putting it so mildly as to con- 
ceal the truth. It would be accurate to say, that no king 
possesses as much power. The King of England would 
not dare, without consulting his Cabinet and Parlia- 
ment, to announce exactly what the millions of British 
citizens were to shed their blood and die for, or precisely 
Avhat the terms of peace must be. It is bewildering. 
Power over food and coal and railroads and factories, 
power over the money of the Nation, power over the lives 
and property of the citizens! And yet the continual 
demand is, "more power," **more power." 

It is not more power that is needed, but a better use 
of the power already assumed. 

A colored minister was preaching at a camp meeting, 
and making the welkin ring with his vociferations. "0 
Lord," he shouted, ''give us power, give us power, 
Lord ! That is what we need, Lord, power, power, ])ower. ' ' 
At last one of the more intelligent hearers became dis- 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

gusted and exclaimed, "Niggah! What you need is not 
powah, but ideabs." 

The lack of planning and coordination has filled 
thoughtful observers with consternation. Many fiascoes 
are now old stories. The most recent is the aeroplane 
situation. It was brought out in the Senate within the 
last few days, that $650,000,000 have been expended in 
aeroplane construction, with a result at the end of a year, 
not one battle plane, not one scouting plane has been built ; 
and our soldiers in the trenches faced the perfectly 
equipped Germans, without an aeroplane for scouting or 
for defence. Meanwhile utterly false reports, reports in- 
tentionally misleading, ''naked untruths" w^ere deliber- 
ately published in the official Bulletin of the Committee of 
Public Information ; and when these disgraceful facts were 
admitted on the floor of the Senate, a Senator defending 
the Administration had the effrontery to ask, " What 
difference does it make V 

What is needed is a better use of the power already 
possessed. If a chauffeur driving a twenty horse-power 
Ford has accidents, jams the car in the traffic, and ditches 
it on the roadside, the trouble is not due to lack of power, 
but to lack of skill. Give him a sixty horse-power Rolls 
Eoyce, and the accidents will be more serious. What is 
needed is not a more powerful car, but a more skilful 
chauffeur. 

The proposition to throw the Constitution overboard 
in order to get results would be like proposing to mariners 
in a storm that they throw their charts overboard so as to 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

get more quickly to port. They need their charts a thou- 
sand times more vitally in the storm than they do when 
everything is calm. 

The Constitution of the United States is the Palladium 
of our Liberty. Great wars have been waged through 
countless generations ; millions of heroes have shed their 
blood and laid do^\Ti their lives, in order to secure for 
mankind the privileges of Freedom which are safeguarded 
in its wise provisions, provisions which are the buttresses 
of this Republic. To permit those buttresses to be under- 
mined or removed for a second would be a folly both 
criminal and contemptible. 

George Washington would not have allowed it. So 
far from asking for power, when more power was olf ered 
to him, he indignantly declined it, and sternly rebuked 
those who made the suggestion. 

A laborer's wife was sick at a hospital ; and he stopped 
every morning on his way to work to inquire how she 
was. The first morning they told him, * ' She is improved," 
and he went to his task with a lighter heart. The second 
morning the reply was, **She is improved," and he was 
filled with hope. So upon the third and fourth mornings 
the report was, "She is improved," "She is improved." 
Then the fifth morning he was told, "She is dead;" and 
the poor man staggered down the street, bewildered and 
crushed. A friend meeting him, exclaimed : 

"Why, John! What on earth is the matter?" 

"My wife is dead," he sobbed. 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

**Dead?" exclaimed his friend. "I am very sorry. 
What did she die of?" 

**0h!" moaned the heart-broken man; ''she died of 
improvements.'' 

Unless they are careful, the citizens of this country 
may sometime discover that Liberty has died of improve- 
ments. Citizens who are so bereft as to allow the Palla- 
dium of Liberty, the Constitution, to be undermined, would 
get no more than their desserts, if they awoke to find 
themselves betrayed to the tyranny of a Bolsheviki mob 
manipulated by a hypocritical demagogue. Making *'a 
scrap of paper" of the Constitution is worse treason than 
trampling upon the flag, because the flag is only the sym- 
bol of that of which the Constitution is the essential 
embodiment. To trample on the flag is to insult the sym- 
bol of the Republic; to make ''a scrap of paper" of its 
Constitution is to assassinate the Republic's very life. 

In the midst of times which test our intelligence as 
well as try our souls, the great asset of our beloved Nation 
is the Patriotism of its inhabitants. They have poured 
out their money by billions. I admire their liberality. 
They have given their sons. The best young men of 
America are in the service of the Government. I rever- 
ence their consecration. The most beautiful thing in our 
land to-day is this army of young men who have offered 
their lives for the service of Liberty. No more heroic 
spectacle ever inspired any generation. They have given 
up opportunity, friends, home, wife, child, loved one. 
They were rich, yet for our sakes they became poor. They 

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PERILS OF THE UNITED STATES 

emptied themselves to serve Humanity. They face hard- 
ship, agony, mutilation, death, in order to protect others. 
They go down into hell for their fellows. Uncomplain- 
ingly, gladly, enthusiastically, they go ; 'and the chastise- 
ment of our peace is laid upon them. Their consecration 
and self-sacrifice is the most exalted spiritual reality of 
our time. It is also the strongest appeal to us to be 
patriotic, to support the Liberty Loan, and the great 
Cause, for surely the least we can do is to be loyal to these 
young men as they suffer and die for us. 

Surrounded by perils both internal and external, con- 
fronted by the one supreme task of winning this war, the 
deei^est wisdom which I hold in my heart, and which I ven- 
ture to bring to you to-day, is the duty of being loyal to 
two things : (1) The duty of being loyal to the Constitution 
of the United States, which safeguards American Liberty 
at home, and (2) the duty of being loyal to the splendid 
soldiers and sailors of the United States, who are defend- 
ing American Liberty abroad. 



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